


i only miss you when the sun goes down (oh, your voice is my favorite sound)

by notcaycepollard



Series: missing you [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: ATCU being shady, F/M, Mentions of Daisy/Lincoln, future fic: Inhuman registration, mention of Civil War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-21
Updated: 2015-11-21
Packaged: 2018-05-02 16:38:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5255603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notcaycepollard/pseuds/notcaycepollard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daisy doesn't even get to say goodbye. She's never wanted to listen to the silence in the spaces between Coulson's words so much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i only miss you when the sun goes down (oh, your voice is my favorite sound)

**Author's Note:**

> (set at a future date, vague reference to Civil War/registration. Title credit is from 'Drift' by Alina Baraz)

She never wanted to leave.

"We have to get you out of SHIELD," Coulson tells her, his voice tense and low and urgent. "Things with the ATCU are going south fast and the President's about to push through some bad legislation. Price is set to move in. We have to get you, you and Lincoln and Joey, out before it's too late."

"Okay," she says. "What's the plan?"

It's a terrible plan.

She doesn't even get to say goodbye, not the way she wants to. Coulson's busy the evening beforehand, off-site consulting in the ATCU until so late it's basically the morning, and when they're called for a mission, she has to play it cool. Price is standing next to him, sharp-eyed and intent, and Daisy has to pretend she's just taking her team on another regular mission, nothing more.

She can't even hug him as she leaves. She looks at him briefly, tries to say it in her gaze instead.

"Agent Johnson," he says, impassive, and then, "Daisy. Take care of yourself." He touches her elbow, blinks once. 

"Yeah," she says. "Yeah. I'll see you tonight."

She turns at the top of the plane ramp, looks back at him over her shoulder, and he's still watching her leave.

Getting out involves May's fancy flying, some sleight of hand, another Quinjet sacrificed to the cause. When they pick themselves out of the wreckage, May gives Daisy a long glance.

"Take care of Andrew," she says. "Please."

"You know I will," Daisy promises, and May, at least, she can hug goodbye.

This is the part of the plan that's terrible, Daisy thinks, this is the worst plan. Coulson's been too close to seeing her death already to have to grieve for her again. It's not _fair_. She pushes it down, grits her jaw, collects herself. They make the liaison with Weaver.

"Agent Johnson," Weaver says, crisp, passes her a new phone. "Ready to see your new base?"

She is. She's ready. This is the base where she'll be a leader. This is the base where it's all on her.

 

  

Weaver can't stay; she's out of the ATCU's direct gaze, but she's still SHIELD, and she can't maintain contact with them. They're on their own. 

"He has this number," Weaver tells Daisy before she leaves. "The line's clear for a minute and a half. We'll send people, resources, when we can." Daisy nods, sees her out, activates the perimeter alarm. Sits down in her empty bunk, looks at the hula doll on the bedside table. She doesn't know how Coulson smuggled this out without her noticing. It's all she has left, winnowed down.

The waiting is hard, but Daisy's busy caring for her people. Alisha is there, and a few Inhumans in stasis, Andrew among them. They'd only got this far before things collapsed between Coulson and Price, the ATCU cracking down hard, and cooperation turned into monitoring. It's too little, but Daisy can start from here, at least. She has the staff and resources from the Cocoon; Coulson shut it down a month ago, very visibly. She'd been angry then. She's grateful, now.

Three days after they arrive, she finally gets a call, and her breath catches as she answers.

"You're safe," Coulson says, soft and tender.

"Yeah, Phil," she tells him. "I'm safe. Didn't get to pack my favorite jeans, though. Tell Simmons to hold on to them for me, would you? Don't throw away my stuff just because I'm dead."

"Don't joke," he says, and she hears the pain in his voice. "Daisy, don't-"

"Sorry," she apologizes, immediately contrite. "Is it... is it hard?"

"It's hard," Coulson agrees, takes a deep breath. "Everyone misses you. You remember how it was when Trip..."

"You didn't tell them?" she asks, but of course he didn't. This is Coulson keeping her safe. He and May know, but to the rest of the team, she's gone. It _hurts_. "But the base is okay? Price doesn't suspect?"

"We're fine," Coulson says. "Our safe line is about to end. Take care, Daisy."

"You too," she says, but the line's already gone dead.

"Coulson says the base is fine," Daisy tells Lincoln, and he just nods once.

 

 

Lincoln doesn't share her room; the bunks are narrow and the beds are narrower. But that doesn't stop them sharing their space, easing their loneliness with each other. His hands on her skin, his mouth against hers, it helps when they're remembering everything they've both lost. 

She doesn't tell him the next time Coulson calls.

He works with the new Inhumans, teaches the staff the best techniques for a safe and quick transition, and Daisy's grateful for this. She can't seem to get close to him, otherwise. They eat in silence each night, as she reads mission reports, tactics, data she's picked out of ATCU and SHIELD alike, and he reads medbay details. Joey breaks the quiet, gives Daisy information on their new recruits, and she's already thinking of him as her best lieutenant. 

Coulson never calls at the same time, but it's always late at night, and in that minute and a half, Daisy feels her heart open up. She answers the phone one night when she and Lincoln are both sitting in the common area, her feet resting against his thigh, and without thinking about it she stands up, moves into her office.

"It's good to hear your voice," she tells Coulson honestly, and he breathes out in a way that says he's smiling.

"I miss you too," he says, and it makes Daisy press her hand in against her throat. They listen as much to the silences between each other as their voices, even in a minute and a half, even with all the information they have to pass each other. 

"Daisy, I-" Coulson says, and the line ends. 

"Who were you talking to?" Lincoln asks quietly when she comes back in the room, and Daisy pretends not to hear.

She wonders what Coulson was about to tell her.

 

 

"Do you even need me here?" Lincoln asks her days later, and for all that she knew it was coming, it's still a shock.

"You know we do," she tells him, sets down the tablet she's working on. "Your medical knowledge, your work with transition-"

"That's not what I mean," he says, frustrated. "Okay, though. If that's how you want to play it. You know, I thought you were different from your mother."

It doesn't even sting. She's been compared to worse. Under everything that HYDRA did to Jiaying, everything that they made her, Daisy knows her mother was committed beyond everything else to protecting her people. If Lincoln thinks she's cold, unfeeling, can't see that she's wearing it like armor to keep herself standing right now, that's his problem.

(Jiaying  _loved_  Cal, too, Daisy thinks before she can stop herself, loved her human husband and was loved by him in return, and that's really the problem here. Her heart's not in it, with Lincoln.)

"Are we done?" she says, her voice sharp, because Lincoln might be bitter about Jiaying and be upset about how it's gone down with Daisy but it was still a shitty thing to say.

"Yeah," he sighs. "Yeah, Daisy, we're done."

"I'm lonely," she tells Coulson the next time he calls, and it feels like more honesty than she's said in months.

 

 

The phone calls don't last. The line's not safe anymore, not even for a minute and a half, and again, Daisy doesn't even get to say goodbye. She's never wanted to listen to the silence in the spaces between Coulson's words so much.

They send encrypted messages instead, hidden in the data the ATCU doesn't know to look for. Daisy's the best hacker out there. She's got all her old Rising Tide tricks, ways of getting information out. It's impersonal, though, just makes her lonelier. She talks to Joey, watches movies with him and the other recruits, bakes cookies and drinks beer and even plays a couple of rounds of Halo, but it's not the same.

(It's really not the same when Lincoln walks into the room and walks out again, when Joey gives her a sympathetic wince.)

It's thinking about Rising Tide that reminds her, in the end, and that night she goes to her bunk, shuts the door, sets up her laptop to record. Lies down on her bed, takes a deep breath.

_I miss you_ , she starts, and then the words flood out of her.  _We played video games tonight and it reminded me of Mack. Do you remember that day? The one where everything started going wrong? After you- after we argued, after we fought, I played a few rounds with Mack, got my anger out._

_ I was so angry at the call you made, Coulson, at what it was you were doing for me. Letting the ATCU in. Letting them have you. And how you were using her first name, and all the things I wasn't saying. I thought Lincoln would understand being Inhuman. I thought he might be able to know me better than you. _

_ He doesn't, I guess. I don't know if anyone could. _

It's confessional, a journal spoken aloud, and at first she doesn't think she'll send it. But her hands click through the motions, compress the audio file, mail it out into the space where Coulson will find it, and she breathes out, bites her lip, doesn't feel regret.

 

 

It's a week before he replies, and there's work data too, pages and pages of information to sift through before she gets to his voice message. She waits until late that night, until the base is quiet, gets into bed and puts on her headphones and presses play. 

_There was so much I wanted to tell you_ , Coulson says, his voice warm and soft and intimate in her ears, and Daisy lets out a long breath, listens to him talk.

This is how they communicate now, in voice recordings sent like letters in uncertain times across oceans and continents. There's so much distance between them now, time and space and totalitarian legislation pressing against her very existence, and it always takes days if not weeks before they can reply to each other. Daisy wonders if this is what it was like when lovers waited for letters, pressed the paper against their lips. She listens to his recordings so often she can recognize each intonation by heart. 

He records, sometimes, sounding as if he's sitting at his desk. Long stretches of silence, the tiny chink of a glass against his teeth. Coulson sounds tired all of the time. Daisy's tired all of the time. They echo each other.

_We lost someone today_ , she says, has to pause for her weeping. Her breath hitches and she sobs and the recording catches it all.  _How do you do it, Phil? How does it get easier?_

_It never gets easier_ , he sends back days later,  _this is being a leader, Daisy, this is us caring for our people, it's hard, it's so hard, I know_ , and his voice is like his hand cupped against her cheek, his fingers gentle, his thumb wiping away her tears.

 

 

 _Nobody here remembers me as Skye_ , she says wistfully.  _Well, Lincoln does, I guess, but he didn't really know Skye. Only a little bit of her. It's not the same_.  _They all know me as Daisy Johnson, and Daisy Johnson is the leader, someone in charge, someone responsible for everything. For making hard decisions. For keeping them all safe._ She shifts, pulls the comforter up around her, because it's winter now and this base is cold.

 _Sometimes I wish I could be Skye again_ , she confesses.  _Being Daisy, it's hard. There's so much to live up to._

 _Skye_ , Coulson says in reply, and the way he says her name is the way he's always said it, like a blessing on his lips.  _I remember you as Skye. I remember you as Daisy. I just remember you, Daisy, god._

_When you changed your name, and I kept getting it wrong. I was so angry with myself, so frustrated. I knew it was your identity, something you were doing to honor your parents, a choice you were making deliberate and careful and beautiful, and I couldn't even say the right name. It got so I'd lie awake at night, making myself whisper your name over and over, trying to make it stick._

_Daisy Daisy Daisy. And then Skye would still slip out, and god, I'd feel like such a fool._

Daisy rewinds, plays it again, and falls asleep to Coulson whispering her name as reverent prayer. The crispness of the consonants, the soft hiss of the s, it lulls her to sleep better than any white noise.

 

 

 _Tell me a secret_ , she says the next time, and he tells her two.

_I used to listen to your Rising Tide recordings. I'd play them over and over, listen to them until I could tell your conspiracy theories right along with you. You mentioned Puente Antiguo once, and god, I grinned for days just knowing you were talking about me._

_I knew the cadences of your voice, knew every intonation, the way it sounded when you drew breath. I fell in love with your voice before I ever met you._

It takes her breath away when she hears it, makes her pause and then smile and then laugh through her tears, and as she clicks play again, Joey knocks on her door.

"Sorry," he says, "I know it's late, but the news- I think you'll want to see it."

 

 

The news is good. The first good news they've had in eight months of carefully hidden identities, working between the cracks of SHIELD. The war is over. There's a new amendment to the Constitution, recognizing Inhuman rights, and it's being ratified tonight, in a room full of flashbulbs. Daisy sees Price through the news cameras, just a glimpse of her hair, and of course she's involved. She's always involved.

The war's not  _over_ , not so quickly, but it is, or it will be, and Daisy thinks of the sun on her face.

There's another message from Coulson, when she gets back to her quarters, and she decrypts, presses play.

_I love you._

_Come home?_


End file.
